My work designing a housing project in the South End of Boston.
Our site was on the edge of this fabric, so my project sought to create a coherent threshold between the established rhythm of the South End and the larger building projects that occupied the adjacent context.
My final design centered on using stop motion animation, set to music to show the rhythm that drives my project. It transitions from the urban scale to the building scale twice, to show the different construction logics of the two housing types I developed.
The housing project required the organization of 150-200 units of housing (allowing for multiple unit types such as one bedroom, two bedroom, etc) along with a large public program (in my case a cinema).
The project started with doing extensive research on the South End, and then presenting it to our classmates (as each section of the studio had a different area of Boston). The red area in the top right corner of the South End shows where our site would ultimately be.
After researching the area and deciding on a good site to work with, we were tasked with creating a site model that showed the site we were considering along with its adjacent context. The scale chosen by the department was 1"=40', and the model was created through a tremendous group effort.
The finished site model. The removable red insert shows where our site is specifically in the context.
This sketch shows my logic for the project's site plan, where I sought to turn our collection of vacant lots into spaces with workable dimensions, and then define these spaces through perimeters of housing.
Early section, trying to show how the perimeter my buildings formed created a sense of interior open space.
This is an earlier version of my final stop motion animation.
The arrangement of mass in this would change dramatically as my project advanced near the end of the semester, and I would redo this animation accordingly, but it is interesting to see how it develops between the two pieces.
After the first stop motion, my project developed to differentiate the buildings which addressed Washington from the ones which addressed alley streets (as seen in this sketch).
This sketch shows an abstraction of this idea.
Sketch of the taller building type.
Diagram of my adjustment of the site, with alley streets forming a minor axis to complement the major axis Washington st makes (along with Shamutt and Harrison).
Diagram of my housing placed on the site, with connected housing blocks in red, and taller housing buildings in blue. There is a connected blue housing, which represents my placement of a required public program (a cinema).
Sketch showing my logic in considering the cinema. I used it to create a sectional shift under two of my taller housing type, addressing its place at the corner of Washington and also allowing it to define a green public space.
Plan of the housing block type.
Section of the housing block type. The sectional shift allows for higher living room ceilings. This shift is from the facade which faces the garden spaces, creating a horizontal rhythm to give the garden a sense of enclosure. The street facade meanwhile creates a vertical rhythm to work with the South End's historic row houses.
Perspective of the street facade.
Perspective of the garden facade.
Exploded axon showing the construction logic of the housing block type. Wooden flooring spans between concrete walls, which have a brick facade on the street, and a glass facade on the back. The circulation cores then are set back, and have an all glass facade on both sides.
Plan of the taller housing type, The shift in plan allows for monolithic street facades, while allowing northern and southern light into the living rooms (and on the back allows the light into a master bedroom).
Section of the taller housing type.
Perspective of the street facade, showing the blank facade with glass fenestration on the sides.
Exploded axon of the taller housing type. Its floors span between brick side walls, but also receive support from the concrete walls which define the front and back facades. The circulation at the front of the building utilizes a glass facade, to match the housing block type.
Site plan at 40th scale.
Sections at 40th scale
Building plans at 1/8th scale
Section at 1/8th scale
Exploded axon of the housing block type at 1/8th scale
Exploded axon of the taller housing type at 1/8th scale
Model used in both stop motions of the housing block type. This is made of cardboard, construction paper, and trace paper for the glass. It's not in any way polished, but in terms of being a workable model it was very effective (especially with the stop motion animations).
Model of the taller housing type, used in the final stop motion (embedded below). Its construction was also unpolished, allowing for it to be easily worked during the making of the animation.
